This first -person column is from Eyasu Yakob, who is a nursing student at Edmonton. For more information about the first person stories of CBC, please See frequent questions.
I started the Nursing School at 2021 at the University of Alberta during the Covid-19 Pandemia. In all of Canada, it was caught the growing attention around the shortage of nurses, since many health workers reported exhaustion. I wanted to be part of the solution.
My father inspired me to join the profession, who worked as a nurse in Ethiopia before emigrating to Canada. Like many health professionals with international educationHe faced barriers so that his foreign nursing credentials are recognized in Canada. Instead, he worked in multiple precarious works and low salary salaries to support our family.
The nursing search allowed me to continue with its legacy, and sincerely expected the opportunity to take care of patients. I knew that my trip would not be easy: academic expectations were intense and there was the reality of having to balance that several days a week completing practical training in the hospital. But nothing prepared me for the financial loads that I found amazing while working to become a registered nurse.
In my second year, I was assigned to a clinical placement in a suburban hospital on Edmonton’s outskirts with the expectation of being there at 6:30 am for my first turn. It would have been my first experience in an acute care atmosphere and I was already quite nervous. When I knew that the hospital was two hours from where I live in public transport (and that the buses did not even run early enough to get in time even if I tried), I was fighting.
Without another option, I bought a vehicle used at the height of the increase in the prices influenced, an important expense that I had not seen but could not avoid if I wanted to progress in the program. In addition to the cost of registration, books, certifications and supplies, automobile spending: gas for long trips, expensive parking fees for each shift and vehicle insurance, added hundreds of dollars to my limited budget each month.
To make things worse, he had assumed that there would be some form of financial compensation during clinical locations. That is the case for students in fields such as engineering either The exchanges who also completed practical training during their programs. However, nursing is an exception. None of the more than 1,400 clinical hours required for my program was paid.
For a while, I tried to juggle with several part -time jobs, such as working as a research assistant, with the demands of the Nursing School. This meant waking up at 5 in the morning for my clinical placement, followed by spending hours completing readings and tasks and catching up with labor responsibilities while trying to maintain a life appearance. The tension had a price both in my health and in my academic performance, and for the third year, the growing pressures finally forced me to stop working despite the implacable expenses.
But I was lucky. I live at home with my family and his support in the management of my life expenses was the only way I could have continued my studies without income.
Many of my classmates were not so lucky. More than a quarter of nursing students in Canada say that the financial burden has made them consider to quit smoking.
My clinical locations have been incredible learning opportunities to develop my skills and have given me the privilege of caring for patients. But as much as there were wonderful moments such as supporting patient recoveries or the joy of a birth, people care can also have a great personal cost. The threats and verbal abuse of patients are not only too common, but the exposure of routine to infectious diseases also has a very tangible health risk for me and my family.
From the pandemic, Health workers have been praised as “heroes” Apparently without stopping.
However, praise heroism does not mitigate any of the occupational risks that I have been exposed during my training. It does not add the inherent emotional burden to work in a clinical environment and certainly does not help to compensate for the apparently endless costs of the Nursing School.
I entered nursing to take care of others, but it seems that I don’t care.
In the midst of these pressures, I have questioned if the nursing is worth it. Sometimes, it seems that I am not being evaluated in my potential aptitude as a nurse, but in my ability to withstand the endless financial pressures amid the intense workload of the Nursing School.
Sometimes everything feels desperate.
When I have these doubts, I try to concentrate on my family and the sacrifices they made to build a life in Canada. I want to carry out the aspirations to my father was denied. I think of the immense challenges he overcome, and encourages me to resist structural injustice in nursing education.
Facing nursing scarcity, provincial governments are trying to recruit abroad. But these last efforts have internationally educated nurses in Canada feeling ignored.
Now I am in my last semester, completing my preceptory, my longest and longer placement so far. For 10 weeks, I have to work for 350 hours at the hospital, making 12 -hour shifts day and night, weekends and vacations.
With the amount of money I had to spend on the registration this semester, according to my mathematics, I am essentially paying $ 8 per hour for this unpaid clinical placement. I am anxious to be close to the finish line, so close to my dream of becoming a nurse. But I can’t help feeling frustrated. The financial precarity of the Nursing School could be so easily prevented if there was the political will to address this inequality and equip students with financial support as pay clinical locations, which in turn would address the shortage of nursing.
However, I know that for autumn there will be a new lot of students about to experience the same roller mountain that I have.
Do you have a convincing personal story that can provide understanding or help others? We want to know about you. Here is More information about how to launch us.
